Microsoft has officially announced that Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be released to the general public on February 22, 2011. Volume License customers, TechNet and MSDN subscribers will get access to the download on February 16. OEM and other Microsoft partners got access to the bits yesterday. For server admins, one of the more interesting features of Service Pack 1 is Dynamic Memory. From the Windows Server Blog:

Our first new feature, Dynamic Memory, takes Windows Server’s Hyper-V feature to a whole new level. Dynamic Memory lets you increase virtual machine density with the resources you already have—without sacrificing performance or scalability. In our lab testing, with Windows 7 SP1 as the guest operating system in a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) scenario, we have seen a 40% increase in density from Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM to SP1. We achieved this increase simply by enabling Dynamic Memory.

For desktop users, RemoteFX will be a boost for users who frequently RDP into their clients, or are running desktops in virtual machines.

RemoteFX is an exciting technology that lets you virtualize the Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) on the server side and deliver next-generation rich media and 3D user experiences for VDI.

Get ready to start patching systems, according to Tom Warren at Winrumors, Windows 7 Service Pack 1 will be released on Tuesday and is being pushed out for last minute testing to OEMs today. Tom explains:

In a blog posting on Thursday, Microsoft’s Russian Windows Virtualization team confirmed that the final build of Windows 7 SP1 is 7601.17514.win7sp1_rtm.101119-1850. The Russian site also explains that the Service Pack will be available publicly today. Microsoft generally releases Service Packs on a Tuesday so it’s not clear whether the Russian technet post is referring to a public release to select partners or a full web release. WinRumors understand the software giant will ship the release to its OEM partners today but that a web release is expected at a later date.

Along with Windows 7, Microsoft will likely release Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 at the same time, as the code base is the same and testing for that update has been inline with the client version.

Microsoft has unleashed the release candidate bits to Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Since they're both based on the same kernel and code base they get most of their major patches together. Weighing in at 514MB for the 32-bit version and 865MB for 64-bit, these are not light updates. It includes all hotfixes and patches released in the last year. You also have the option of installing a small patch to tell Windows Update to automagically do the downloading for you, but the effect on your Internet connection will be the same. A couple of new features introduced in Service Pack 1 include:

RemoteFX introduces a new set of remote user experience capabilities that enable a media-rich user environment for virtual and session-based desktops. RemoteFX can be deployed to a range of thick and thin client devices, enabling cost-effective, local-like access to graphics-intensive applications. RemoteFX also supports a broad array of USB peripherals to improve the productivity of users of virtual desktops. SP1 also includes Dynamic Memory, which enables servers running Hyper-V for server virtualization, to be more efficient in the use of memory.  Dynamic Memory pools and distributes memory among the virtual machines running on a physical host, enabling higher consolidation ratios, increasing server utilization rates, and providing more flexible workload management.

It's not recommended to run the RC on production systems, as you have to uninstall it prior to installing the final version and that just makes your system all kinds of unhappy. The final bits should be released in first quarter 2011. via Windows Server Division Weblog

Just a reminder, Windows 2000 will reach it's end of life in July. Microsoft has outlined July 13, 2010 as the date Windows 2000 will no longer be supported by Microsoft. There are already a variety of security threats in the wild where Microsoft has said they will not be releasing updates to protect Windows 2000 because they say it is not feasible. After next July, no support or new updates (except for online self-help) will be available.

In a related bit of news, Microsoft is addressing an issue latest Forefront antimalware client update won’t install on Windows 2000 when the installation is run via Automatic Updates. When this issue occurs, the update uninstalls the previous version of the antimalware client, and then tries to install the new version and fails, leaving the system without the antimalware service.

Microsoft's published workarounds are to decline the updates for Windows 2000 systems (976669 is the FCS slipstream client) and make sure that the previous FCS antimalware updates are approved (971026 and original FCS client), or run the install interactively as a logged on user.

My workaround... stop using a 11 year old operating system and upgrade to at least Windows 2003.